The School Building Committee is meeting this Monday at 5:30 pm at Pell Elementary School. The School Building Committee is a body made up of community members, teachers and faculty, School Committee members, City Council members, City staff, and others. We are charged with overseeing the design and construction of the addition at Pell School and the new Rogers High School. During Monday’s meeting, we will be receiving an update from the SLAM Collaborative, the designers of the new Rogers High School, and a progress report on the construction at Pell School. These meetings are open to the public and I encourage you to attend to keep up to date on both projects.
This Wednesday the Council will be holding another workshop on food trucks and where they should be allowed in the City. We are meeting at 6:30 in the Council Chambers. You may remember that in 2019, the Council spent multiple meetings and many hours deliberating on the ordinances governing food trucks in Newport. We decided to go with a zoning-based approach when determining which areas of the City to allow them. Since then, debate continued centered on a section of Bellevue Ave based on councilors’ misunderstanding of the City’s zoning. As our ordinances stand today, food trucks may operate in all zoning districts where restaurants are allowed by right, so long as they are not closer than 250 feet to a restaurant. Now we may be looking at moving away from a zoning-based ordinance to restricting the food trucks to set locations throughout the City. I still believe that the current regulations are both clear and fair to business, but I am open to revisiting this idea as long as we can come up with a consistent plan for regulating food trucks across the City. I look forward to the discussion and hearing from residents and local businesses on the topic.